


As The Morning And The Night (The Rockabye Remix)

by The_Wavesinger



Category: Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Family Dynamics, Gen, Siblings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-16
Updated: 2019-09-16
Packaged: 2020-10-05 05:35:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,055
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20483726
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Wavesinger/pseuds/The_Wavesinger
Summary: Mary Pevensie, in word and deed.(For a female Peter Pevensie, Narnia is when everything falls into place.)





	As The Morning And The Night (The Rockabye Remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Elizabeth Culmer (edenfalling)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/edenfalling/gifts).
  * Inspired by [The Spell Begins To Break](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2023140) by [Elizabeth Culmer (edenfalling)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/edenfalling/pseuds/Elizabeth%20Culmer). 

1.

The sword and the shield, everything Mary has always been torn between, being held out to her. They glitter in the sun that’s newly-bright in the sky, shining silver, inlaid with intricate red-and-gold designs but not flashy or even eye-catching. They’re weapons, plain and simple. Tools for a warrior.

And there’s no choice to make, here. They’re both hers for the taking, if only she could reach out—

She could turn around now. She could turn around and walk away and it would all be so much easier.

She wants to walk away.

Heaven help her, she wants to walk away. She can’t turn back the way they came, not with the wolves on their trail, but in this magical land if she wanted, truly, to leave, she’s sure there would be a way out. An escape.

She can imagine it, now. Fleeing from all this pain and suffering and betrayal that seems to await her here. Finding a way back home, or at least to the country house where they’re safe from the _other_ war, the real war, the war she’s been sent away from to be kept safe, and look where they are instead, tumbling into another fight.

Women aren’t built for war; she’s been told that over and over again. Laurie and Steve know that. They would understand, if she ran.

She _could_ run. It would be easy.

Instead, she reaches out.

The handle (pommel? somewhere in the back of her mind she knows the proper word, but that’s not important now) of the sword rests in the palm of her hand. It feels wrong, somehow, as if it doesn’t belong to her. As if she’s stealing something from someone else. The shield hangs heavy from her arm, and she doesn’t know how she’s ever going to lift it, because she can’t.

_I can’t_, Mary thinks, I_ can’t_. She feels like she’s back at school being stripped naked by those awful girls, except it’s worse because it’s not someone doing something to her, it’s just her being a selfish coward. It’s her, always stuck, never able to actually step up, trapped.

Hot tears prick at the corner of her eyes, but she blinks them away, something that she’s had long practice in. She’s not going to cry, she’s not going to drop the stupid sword (why would anyone give her a sword, when all she’s ever heard is that you mustn’t fight, Mary, that’s not what good girls do), she’s not going to run away, because as much as she wants to, she has to think about Laurie and Steven and Edith—

_Edith_.

She has failed Edith so many times, disappointed her again and again. This is all her own fault, in a way. If she’d been there, if she’d just listened, maybe Edith wouldn’t be lost.

And whatever kind of coward she is, she’s not going to run from her own sister.

She straightens, and buckles the sword into her belt. Takes a deep breath, squares her shoulders.

They’ve got a long way to go.

2.

Steve is shouting, his horn blowing, and she runs to him.

It’s instinct.

This is an old familiar fight, bullies in the schoolyard threatening her brother, and how dare they say those things, do those things, he’s her brother, her baby brother, and of course she’s going to protect him because that’s her job, her duty, to protect him and look after him, because she’s his big sister.

She holds steel in her hands, and her enemy is aiming to kill. The grass and soil are loose beneath her feet, shifting slightly every time she moves, nothing like the firmness of concrete pavement. Steve is huddled up a tree, not shouting for her to _back down, Mary, you don’t need to do this_.

It’s different in every single way, and yet it’s the exact same rhythm. The fight comes to her easy.

But at the end, she’s left panting, on her knees, with the carcass of a dead wolf, of a creature of the White Witch, at her feet. Its grey hair is matted and dull, now. Without the spark of malice in its eyes, laid out limp and silent and unmoving, it looks harmless. Innocent.

Her sword is red with blood, and isn’t that a first, she thinks hysterically, she’s broken noses for Steven, yes, but she’s never actually killed someone for her brother.

Her brothers pile on her, and she can feel Laurie’s tears wet her clothes as he weeps unashamedly. Their arms are warm and familiar and comforting, and she thinks_, I have killed for you. I will always kill for you. I will do anything for you._

Aslan speaks to her, and she replies, and the entire world is a blur. She’s wiped her sword and she can still feel blood dripping from it, from her hands, from her body. The rich clothes the Narnians gave her are stained, she’s sure. Her entire body aches, and she can barely hold herself up. She wants to sink into the ground and vomit up her guts into the pristine bubbling water of the brook, sully the mocking sound of the running water that seems to be laughing at her in its joyous sounds.

(“It is no weakness to fear killing, Daughter of Eve,” Aslan will tell her later, and she’ll know it to be true in her mind even if her heart rejects the idea, but now all she can do is shake and shudder and press her lips together and try to keep steady, to keep up appearances for Laurie and Steven.)

Her hands shake on the pommel of her sword, but she holds her head high.

She’ll do what she needs to do. If that means killing, she’ll do that. For her siblings, for her little brothers and her sister, there’s nothing she wouldn’t ever do.

**3.**

Edith doesn’t say “I’m sorry, Mary.” And Mary doesn’t respond, “I’m sorry too.”

That’s not how they do things, not anymore. Not for a long time now.

(It was different, when they were both still little girls, without the burden and the expectation that one day soon they would grow into women. But things change. Time passes. They can’t go back. All they can do is be here, now.)

Instead, Mary stands with her, silently, and squeezes her shoulder when people mutter about her. She braids her hair and tucks it back carefully. She holds her when Edith wakes screaming and crying from nightmares Mary doesn’t ask about. (She doesn’t ask because if she asks, then she’ll _know_. In this one way she will keep lying to herself.)

There’s a strange kind of silence between them, fingers and arms brushing accidentally but otherwise holding away from touch, jokes and play-fights that suddenly turn into awkward quiet, training that isn’t quite friendly and a little more competitive than it should maybe be. But they manage much better than they used to. They’re not _friends_, maybe. But they fall back into old rhythms, into old routines, and it’s good. It works.

Until—

Mary hears the snap of the Witch’s wand above the noise of the battle. Even as she feels joy bubbling up, sudden and sharp, she sees Edith falling. Falling, falling, falling, and Mary’s heart is in her throat as she rushes to her, and she knows it’s too late, but the Witch will _pay_.

But Aslan is leaping to the Witch with a roar, and suddenly it’s over. And then it’s just Mary, kneeling on rocky ground holding Edith (Edith’s body, but no, she’s still alive, still breathing) in her arms. And then Steven comes running, and then Laurie. And Laurie’s cordial, and then Mary’s heart is in her throat, and she holds her breath and prays like she’s never done before.

When Edith gasps and blinks back to life, she hugs Edith, the baby sister she has time and time again failed to protect, and finally, finally, she says, “I love you, Edith. I love you.”

(“I missed you,” Edith says, later, much later, when they’re alone in the castle that is apparently now theirs to hold and live in. “I missed you so much. I know it’s not your fault but—”

“I know,” Mary replies. “I know.” She does know, now. In Narnia, without all of the rules of back home, this is so much easier.

And it makes it easier to press her lips to Edith’s forehead in a light, gentle touch. “I’m sorry, Edith. I’m so sorry.”

Edith doesn’t have to ask what she’s apologizing for. She knows. And she leans into Mary’s arms, rests her head on Mary’s shoulder, and it’s forgiveness and apology both at once.)

4.

“We’ve done it, Mary,” Laurie whispers to her, and his voice is so gleeful, intimate and low below the voices of a multitude of Narnians and yet filled with joy, that Mary has to laugh.

“We’ve done it,” she agrees, and hugs him.

And then—

And then Aslan places crowns on their heads and gives them their thrones.

“High Queen Mary,” he says, in that deep rumbling voice of his, golden and velvety and home, “I crown thee Queen above all other Kings and Queens of Narnia,” and she trembles at the words, oldnew fear rising in her throat, but she bows her head and accepts the crown (so light and so heavy, a weight tugging and pulling and yet not dragging her down).

Later, once the party has dwindled and all her siblings have gone to bed, she pads out to one of the balconies. She can’t stop thinking, fears and hopes buzzing around in her mind. She needs to walk, to move. To do something. She won’t be able to sleep, not like this.

The cool air will, she hopes, help her clear her head.

Aslan is already there. He’s staring up at the glittering stars amidst the pitch-black sky, the constellations so different from the ones she’s familiar with. His mane flutters in the sea-breeze that washes across the balcony.

By some instinct, she goes to him and buries her head in his fur. She would never have thought to have done that until today (that’s something Laurie would do, affection without even a single thought about it), but the fur of his mane is comforting and warm. It feels like home, in a way, and her throat tightens at the thought.

“What’s going to happen next, Aslan?” she asks eventually. They’re not going to go back home, she knows that now, but beyond that—

They’re kings and queens, and she doesn’t even know what kings and queens _do_.

“That is up to you, Queen Mary,” Aslan says. “Narnia is meant to be ruled by Daughters of Eve and Sons of Adam, not by a lion.”

“But—” she cuts herself off. This is Aslan. She won’t contradict him. Aslan believes in her, but there’s that niggling sense of doubt she can’t let go of. And from the warmth in his eyes, he knows that. He knows her, and that’s an oddly comforting thought.

Aslan _smiles_ at her. That’s the only way she can describe it, a smile. “Did you think your title was a trinket, High Queen Mary?”

“I—that is—” she blushes. She can’t imagine being a queen, a proper queen, despite everything. And yet. “I’ll make you proud, Aslan, I promise. _We’ll _make you proud.”

“Of that, dear one, I have no doubt..”

Aslan nudges her until she’s lying with her head buried in his mane, spread out across cool stone. She drifts off to sleep still blanketed by his warmth, her heart no longer racing so fast, the restlessness all but gone.

When she wakes, it’s to the gleaming light of the new dawn, waves crashing onto the shore and gulls already cawing up above. The space next to her is still warm, but empty.

She gets up and stretches. Her sword is still in its scabbard, and she draws it out. The steel catches the rays of the sun, and the fire curling on the edges of the gleaming metal looks, for a moment, almost like a lion’s mane.

She takes it in, for a moment, but only a moment. Then she turns and goes back inside.

Their work has only just begun.


End file.
